Assessing Climate Risk in Myanmar: Summary for Policy Makers and Planners

This brief aims to help decision-makers across sectors in Myanmar incorporate climate change risks into planning and investment decisions by summarising key messages from a detailed technical analysis of climate change in Myanmar that is released alongside this report.

Specifically, this brief does the following:

• Provides climate risk information, including observed historical climate and future projections of temperature, rainfall, sea level rise and extreme weather events.
• Highlights how climate change will affect sectors such as biodiversity and ecosystem services, coastal zones, health, agriculture, infrastructure, water resources, and urban areas.
• Provides on-the-ground examples of how climate risk information is being used by the Myanmar Climate Change Alliance (MCCA) to support local planning in the Ayeyarwady Delta and the Central Dry Zone.
• Supports a flexible adaptation approach, providing a range of possible future climates in Myanmar, which helps address changes and impacts already underway and guides planning for changes that are likely to worsen in the future for Myanmar’s people, ecosystems, and economy.

Based on analyses of 19 observed weather stations, the climate in Myanmar is already changing:

• Between 1981 and 2010, average temperatures increased by 0.25°C.
• The pace of warming has been faster inland than in coastal areas, and the rise in daily maximum temperatures has been greater than the daily average.
• Annual total rainfall increased slightly between 1981 and 2010, with a greater rate of increase in coastal areas than in inland ones.
• In coastal areas, the increases occurred throughout the year, while in inland areas the increases occurred mainly during the monsoon season.
• Research suggests that the summer monsoon season has become shorter by approximately one week, on average (Lwin, 2002).